


Adventum

by Spectral_Aspen



Series: Rursus [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Don't worry he gets better, Emotions, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Light Angst, Sad, Short, The Force, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 10:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14809578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spectral_Aspen/pseuds/Spectral_Aspen
Summary: Anakin dies knowing he loves Luke (and vice versa). He's happy with that, if nothing else.Then he wakes up.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> I have a weird take on the Force (or so I've gathered from all of the fics I've read) and I'd be happy to debate it with people/explain my reasoning if it bothers anybody. 
> 
> I really don't own Star Wars or the characters at all, in any way.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death. Loading. Reset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no claim to anyone or anything familiar here, I am merely commandeering it for a few thousand words.

** Chapter I **

The lights are cold, clinical and white. The odd bit of red causes an ache in his chest that doesn’t make sense as it shines on the harsh grey walls around them. Everything aches; his prosthetics struggle to function as Luke hauls him away from the Emperor’s throne room _(how is he even walking after the Emperor nearly killed him?)_. Troops rush and panic around them, everything is loud both physically and in the force. Something happens, the world shifts, and suddenly walking is impossible and Luke is dragging him across the floor, still unwilling to leave him behind despite everything _(brave, shining Luke)_. 

They reach a ship and Luke rests at the base of its boarding ramp, exhaustion and pain lining his features. Luke pulls him up and stares into his eyes as if he can actually see them _(precious, brilliant Luke)._ His son’s name rasps through his dry, cracked lips.

“Luke.”

His son _(his light)_ looks at him with care, and the flicker of light deep inside of him, small and weak after it exploded and consumed the darkness threatening his son, rests steadily within his aching, broken chest and roars out against the dark that still swirls within him at the love he feels from Luke. His son is cradling him as if he were something precious and worthy of such attention, and he cannot help but ask one more thing of his beautiful, glowing son. 

“Help me take… this mask off.”

Luke’s face twists in concern, ready to refuse.

“But you’ll die,” he protests, as if they both cannot feel his life fading away.

A painful smile graces his features unseen. Even after his encounter with the Emperor _(he should never have taken his precious son to face that loathsome wretch)_ Luke remains a beacon of light first and foremost. 

But this care will not stop the inevitable.

“Nothing can stop that now.” He ignores Luke’s flinch. “Just for once… let me… look on you with my own eyes.”

Shock flickers across Luke’s face, followed by sorrow and understanding. Unsure but gentle hands take off his mask, and he can feel his lungs screaming for air as his ventilator _(broken and overloaded while doing the only thing in the last twenty some years that he would never be able to regret)_ is removed and finally stops working. 

As the facemask comes off horror, pain, regret, and finally quiet acceptance settle around Luke as his son sees his true face for the first and last time. A hand rests on his shoulder, barely felt but still, somehow, a comfort.

“Now…” the words, broken and slow, come out dry as dust and painful as a mouthful of heated sand, “go, my son.”

He can see the protest on Luke’s face as he begs him to leave _(please, my light, please heed my words)._

“Leave me-” he tries to say more, but he can’t. The words catch and his breath won’t come and it’s been so long since he tried to speak properly that now, when it matters most, the words get caught in his throat _(or perhaps that’s the grief and terror sitting and clawing at his chest, for what happened and what could yet come if Luke stays for too much longer)._

Already Luke’s head is shaking.

“No, you’re coming with me.” The conviction and determination fill the air around them, pushing and writhing, as if there is no room for any other path. “I’ll not leave you here, I’ve got to save you.” Luke’s eyes plead with him, and love _(bright, warm, painful love like he has not felt for decades)_ washes over and through him, twining around father and son. 

How could his precious Luke think that he still needs to be saved? After he has done and sacrificed so much? He searches out his son’s eyes _(shining as if the Force is glowing from within them, bright with love and conviction),_ trying to help his see what is plainly in front of him.

“You already… have… Luke.” 

He will make these words come, through the dryness and pain, through the love and the regret that blocks his throat, he will make his son see how beautiful and amazing he is. 

“You were right… you were right about me.”

These will be his final words _(he can feel himself fading, sinking down and through the brightness that his precious son shrouds him with)._

“Tell your sister… you were right.” 

Luke’s Force blue eyes shine with tears, and Vader Anakin can feel his heat breaking as Luke reaches for him in the force, flowing around his broken body, as if it’s possible to stop him from fading. 

With one last, blessed look at his son _(don’t cry, my child, I am not worth the water of your tears)_ he can feel his eyes closing. Everything is blurry now, his world closing in so that all he can feel is love and Luke.

“Father.”

It will be alright, Luke.

“I won’t leave you,” he reaches out with the Force for the last time as Luke’s voice cracks, warmth filling his chest as his final breaths scrape through his broken lungs. 

With one last, tender caress, he fades.

Nothing hurts anymore, everything is peaceful. 

Darkness and light flow through him, echoes reach him and brush over him before moving on as if they never were. Sometimes the echoes sound like voices, sometimes they feel like the vaguest hints of sentient beings, and other times they feel only like ripples in a pond washing over and through him.

He is one with the Force, and the Force is with him.

Moments pass… or is it years? It is impossible to tell.

One beat, two beats.

He wakes up.

_________________

Heat. Grit. Sand.

An arid taste that he hasn’t been able to forget no matter how hard he tried.

Somehow, something gently pulled him from the Force without his notice.

Somehow, without opening his eyes, he can tell where he is.

The last place he ever wanted to be _(the origin place of the true Skywalkers)._

Tatooine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Teeth-grinding grammatical errors?


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still don't own anyone (and wow it feels weird saying that when slavery plays such a huge role in Star Wars)

** Chapter II **

He lays on the familiar bed, still refusing to open his eyes or acknowledge how this particular bed is familiar.

Perhaps he is being punished now? Is this to be his repentance? Has he escaped his final form of slavery only to be unwillingly, unknowingly placed back on the world where he was first a slave? 

Now, with his skill in the Force and his mastery over his body _(for the first time in decades he can feel all of his limbs, all his fingers and toes, and it is glorious)_ he can feel something that is more out of place than anything he can remember. It is more jarring and wrong than his prosthetics, and far smaller than all of them.

When he prods at it with the Force, it feels fundamentally _wrong._

“Ani!”

His eyes flash open, the aberration inside of him pushed to the back of his mind _(for now)_ as his eyes go straight to the doorway he knows an impossible being will be standing in, gazing fondly at him.

Shmi Skywalker, alive and whole, her gentle presence extending outwards into the Force as it had when he was young. Now though, he is old enough to see it, and watch as it gently reaches towards him.

If this is real _(how can it be real?)_ then ~~Vader~~ Anakin is going to make the best of it.

“Mom?”

He can feel his own Force presence reaching for her, and he is careful to make sure none of his sorrow and anguish reaches her. That will stay deep within him until he can deal with it at a later date _(he will not let it fester, nor will he ignore it forever, not again)_. 

She smiles, and he feels like his heart is so full it hurts _(last time he saw her smile she died moments later, never to live or love again)._

“We need to go to work, Ani. You know how Watto hates waiting.”

~~Vad~~ Anakin ducks his head in mock sheepishness, struggling to fall back into the motions and ways of being that he had embodied at this age, all the while holding back tears. He wants to run to her, hug her, hold her, and never, ever let her go. 

In the back of his head he can’t help but think this is all a beautiful _(horrible, heartbreaking)_ dream. 

“Yes, mom.”

He hops off his bed and makes his way over to his mother, careful to avoid the mess of his room when the easy movements to do so feel just out of his reach. His head stays down, ostensibly to watch his footing, but really so that he can wrangle some measure of control over himself.

Shmi eyes him carefully, her love curling around him more insistently as she catches his uncertain movements, the way he has yet to meet her eyes, and hears the slight tremor in his voice despite his best attempts to hide it.

“Ani?”

He reaches her, and wraps his arms around her waist. Deep breaths. He can smell her, the smell of sweat and desert and spice that were uniquely her and that had been lost to him for so painfully long _(he had forgotten what she looked like in the end)_. He feels a hand rest gently on his head, another on his back, and he struggles not to cry. His first thought is not to embrace the ache in his chest where he knows his small heart beats, not to pull forth the consuming darkness and bury himself in his pain, nor is it to push the ache away and release his pain into the force in an attempt to keep himself pure, serene, and light.

Instead he takes a deep breath, grips his mother as hard as his little hands and arms can, and lets his love fill him and wrap around his mother, just as Luke’s had for him in his last moments _(had that been only seconds ago? Or was it years?)._

Then he looks up at Shmi, and her beautiful, caring face. He smiles at her, determined to do whatever it took to keep her alive, and basks in the love that he feels, letting it fill the hole that aches where his heart rests, soothing the pain and smoothing down the jagged edges like he had been taught to by his mother so very, very long ago.

As he smiled up at her and let himself simply _feel,_ he could hear her gentle voice in his head, echoing the old Tatooine teachings he had long since forgotten _(buried first from the Jedi, then from the Emperor, until he had truly forgotten)._

_ “ _ Take love where you can find it, Ani dear. Build a family in secret, keep them safe. Nurture them. Love them. Live like they could be taken from you at any moment _(because they could be)._

Treasure them. Fight for them however you can.

When they leave, mourn them. Remember them.

But don’t cry for them, my dear.

Death is a natural part of life, Ani, and those who pass know that water should never be wasted in the desert _(we all know there are fates worse than death)_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Heartwrenchingly irritating grammatical errors?


	3. III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No rights belong to me.

** Chapter III **

He spends his first week back basking in the glory of his mother’s presence _(she’s alive, her body is whole)._

His days are almost boring as he goes from their home to Watto’s shop, and fixing droids and repairing complex mechanics with no other demands upon his time settles him in a way he would never have through possible for a slave to achieve _(he avoids his friends, they are young and naïve and his breath catches and he feels like he is being crushed when he remembers how he left and never came back for them)_.

He can’t bring himself to work on the pod-racer. Every time he looks at it, or catches a glimpse of it, he remembers Qui-Gon and his towering, robe-clad figure taking him from his mother and putting into motion the events that would turn the gears of the universe, turning and turning and turning under the power of various forces _(and Forces)_ until everything light and dark and beautiful and ugly shattered into a million pieces, reforming around a being that was only ever dark and ugly and used ~~Anakin~~ Vader for their own gain while simultaneously crushing ~~Vader~~ Anakin underfoot.

He can tell his avoidance worries his mother, both of his friends and of the pod-racer, but he cannot bring himself to burden her with his worries, not yet. He is content now in a way he has never been _(not even with Padmé; precious, beautiful Padmé)._

Another week passes, and he allows his mother to gently push him out the door, into the light of the twin suns _(like his own twins, he deliberately doesn’t think)_ and the small crowd of children whose faces he can barely remember. They treat him like they always have, he assumes. It’s not like he can remember any differently. Even if they are mean he has lived long enough and experienced so much that he could never consider them cruel. 

He avoids the beings of Tatooine who would do him harm and flits around those who would indulge him, offering his skills for credits or stories, wanting to save money and find out about the state the galaxy is currently in. He knows that he worries his mother, daring to go up to some of the most dangerous beings in the galaxy seemingly without a care for his safety, but he is always careful to leave before they grow tired of his presence.

He eventually looks at the pod-racer, his experienced eyes dancing over it as he mentally makes note of all the things he could improve _(most of it, he could improve most of it)._ Looking at the racer he cobbled together from scrap before his age hit double-digits he wonders how it ever got off the ground, much less carried him to victory _(to freedom, but also to a different kind of slavery)._

A month passes, and while he sometimes still feels like nothing is real and he will wake up somewhere else _(to everything aching and his lungs forcibly inflating and deflating while he sinks into the hole where his heart should be, to nothingness and the almost-serenity of the force all around him),_ he also starts to allow himself to believe this is all truly real. The cloying hatred he feels for this wretched, sand-covered planet is ever present, as is the poorly dampened fury he feels at being a slave again _(but really, has he ever not been a slave to something/one?)._ Every second night he forces himself to deal with his emotions both current and lingering, refusing to ignore them or to allow them to consume him as he would have at different points in his past.

He gets used to breathing again, even though the memories claw wide the hole where he sometimes still thinks his heart isn’t, when the tears stream down his face and he buries himself in blankets so that, even if mother checks in on him, she will not see him cry. He wakes after those nights feeling as though he has been ripped apart and remade, and finds himself gradually feeling all the better for it, even if in the moment he wished more than anything that he could just fade away from everything like he had in Luke’s arms.

Then, as he is rediscovering how much he hates meditating, he remembers the aberration that he felt upon awakening here.

As he settles in to sleep, his mother moving near-silently around in the main room, he extends his senses within himself. Slowly he gains an awareness of every muscle, every bone, every artery and vein, and every tiny capillary carrying even tinier blood cells within himself. He had practiced this as Vader, forcing himself to feel how everything hurt and burned even as the years passed, as if it would help him atone for what he had done and continued to do.

Now he does it for a different reason.

A smallish piece of complex inorganic materials is sitting where it shouldn’t be.

He frowns, senses curling around and isolating the small thing, gently detaching it from the delicate surrounding tissue. What is it? It’s not medical in nature, he is always careful not to get injured, especially here _(Shmi’s careful admonishments echo in his head; slaves are only treated if they’re worth it, and a small child like himself is definitely not worth it, no matter how smart and talented he is)._

A bolt of agony hits him as he determines its purpose, and he curls in on himself as he reflexively gathers his Force presence into himself and away from his mother.

This is his slave transmitter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Potentially fatal grammatical errors?


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out comes the slave transmitter.
> 
>  
> 
> **Warning: Chapter contains gore and very, very unsafe home-style surgery. Please don't read if this could be in any way unhealthy, unsafe, or triggering for you.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning: Chapter contains gore and very, very unsafe home-style surgery. Please don't read if this could be in any way unhealthy, unsafe, or triggering for you.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Still have no rights to anything familiar here.
> 
> If you don't want to read this chapter I'll put a better summary at the end.

** Chapter IV **

He waits until his mother is sleeping to move.

He treads silently through the kitchen and into their washroom, small and empty as it is there is a small box that contains their meager medical supplies within it. 

He remembers Jedi healers, stocked medical areas that smelled like sterility and looked white and clean; he remembers field medics during the war, carrying supplies wherever they could and making due with what they had; and he remembers cold dark rooms, droids working without comment on his broken and burnt body before encasing him in black and sending him on his miserable way. Hopefully he remembers enough to be able to do this.

He retreats to his room and carefully brings out the tiny scalpel buried at the bottom of the med-box. There is nothing to sterilize it with, but when he eyes it the blade looks clean and he knows that there is nothing in his room that is not covered in dirt, sand, or grease to use instead. The chip is in his upper leg, between the _tensor fascia latae_ and the _vastus lateralis_ of his outer thigh _(basic human anatomy he remembers, at least)_. It contains a powerful enough explosive to cause serious damage, but is weak enough and placed far enough from any major arteries so as not to kill him if Watto bothers to send someone after him capable enough to stop him from bleeding out, and later from getting an infection _(slaves don’t get medical care unless they’re useful)._

It’s more than most slaves get _(he ignores the fact that if the wound healed improperly he would be crippled for life; he ignores that he felt a similar aberration at the base of his mother’s skull)_.

One last check assures him that he has a ratty blanket underneath his leg, to absorb the blood that would otherwise cover his bed, and the med-box is within reach should he need it _(not that it has anything that will save him should he truly mess up)_. He carefully makes a shallow cut, keeping himself completely open to the force as he does so. He maintains an awareness of himself similar but not quite as in-depth as when he was first examining the transmitter. He has a plan, but it won’t work if he rushes or cuts in the wrong place, and his hands need to be steady.

It hurts, as he slowly cuts deeper and deeper it hurts a lot, but he has felt far worse for far longer _(and now he is doing this by choice, for his own safety)_ , and so he stays quiet with little trouble. Once he can feel that he’s reached the fascia surrounding the muscles covering the transmitter he stops. He keeps the scalpel in-hand, not wanting it to touch anything and get dirty should he need to use it again. 

Gently, ever so gently, he encases the transmitter with the Force. He pushed his muscles out of the way, creating a small path for the transmitter and sliding it out from between them, and then carefully out of the cut he has made. Once that’s done he gently places the transmitter on a rag next to him; if he can help it the damn thing won’t ever go back inside of him, so he doesn’t care if it gets dirt and sand on it.

Now he can put the scalpel down, and with a little digging in the med-box finds a clean and not-very-sandy piece of gauze big enough to cover the small incision. After at least ten minutes of constant pressure on the incision have passed _(supplemented by what little Force-healing he can remember learning all those decades ago)_ he checks to see if he’s still bleeding. He is, but only a scant amount, enough that he can take pressure off it and let it start healing naturally. With a casual sweep of the Force an old but clean baby blanket is found in the corner of his room, and he floats it over to himself before cutting it into strips and using them to clean and wrap his leg. He’s careful to make sure there’s enough pressure to stop any further bleeding, but not enough to be noticeable through his clothes or to cause any circulation problems. 

With dexterous hands he wraps the chip in wire and attaches it to a piece of string before wrapping it in the rest of the baby blanket and tucking it under his bed. He’ll have to find a way to carry it with him to keep Watto from getting suspicious if he ever decides to check in on his slaves’ locations via the transmitters, but Anakin has to be careful about how he’s going to do that. It would be pointless if he carried the transmitter in his pocket or on a bracelet or something similar, because that would be just as dangerous as before. He’d have to see if he could build or buy a box of some sort to contain it, small enough to keep in a pocket but strong enough to contain the potential explosion.

That done, he picks up the now bloody and ratty blanket he had covering his bed and tucks it into a corner where he knows his mother will never find it. With ginger and careful steps he replaces the med-box in the washroom where he found it.

As he settles into bed, exhausted at the thought of getting up in a few hours but content knowing nothing exciting is going to happen and that he is now safe from being randomly blown-up, he quickly falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Anakin utilizes their terribly lacking medical supplies to get the slave transmitter out of his leg one night after Shmi falls asleep. He uses a little (truly tiny) amount of Force healing to keep from bleeding out and, though he doesn't know it, from getting a horrible infection _(because unsterilized anything during surgery is BAD you tiny idiot)_. End of chapter, he goes to sleep.
> 
> I couldn't find where, exactly, the transmitter was in Anakin online, but I know he had one and that Watto reluctantly deactivated it before Qui-Gon took Anakin off Tatooine, got a lot of info from https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/128925/can-watto-get-drunk-and-blow-up-anakin.


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And everything started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still don't have claim to anything familliar.

** Chapter V **

The pod-racer is finished.

Anakin knows that, Force willing, a certain Jedi team and group from Naboo would be arriving on Tatooine within the next few weeks. The racer works far better this time around that it did when he first built it _(is it considered cheating if he is mentally nearly 47 years old now, instead of the 9 he appears to be?)_

He has been back for just over a year now, and it has been a year sorely needed. 

He had traded repairs for a safety-box from a gruff Mandalorian bounty hunter _(even now a part of him had expected the familiar voice of the Vode to come from beneath that style of helmet, even if the armour and colours were all wrong)_ to keep his slave transmitter in, and tied it to a rope that he kept wrapped around his waist underneath his shirt. If he hadn’t checked every piece of the box’s integrity both with and without the Force he wouldn’t dare keep his transmitter so close, but he needed it on him should Watto ever access the tracking feature. He was waiting for Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan to come with the Nubians and their better medical supplies before even suggesting his mother consider taking out her transmitter. 

All of the residual feelings from his past life have been properly dealt with. They weren’t ignored, or allowed to consume him, they were acknowledged and accepted before moving on. He hoped that his efforts actually stood up in the face of more people from his past life _(people he loved, people he had killed),_ but had no way of testing that yet.

He had plans. Vague ones, ones that were nebulous and undefined and based on memories so old he wasn’t sure they were accurate or not. He had nothing definite planned because he knew from experience that no plan survived first contact with the enemy, and he needed to be able to adapt as situations changed. Concrete, detailed plans were all well and good, but his memories weren’t concrete or detailed enough to be worth risking everything should they go wrong. No, better to have goals and general plans with lots of wiggle room. He had always done better when improvising anyways _(ignoring that what he had always done eventually lead to becoming Darth Vader and the deaths of all the people he had every loved except for his precious Luke)._

His only solid plan involved getting his mother out of here sooner rather than later, possibly legally with Qui-Gon while he himself ran away after them. He would be safe from being blown-up by his lack of implanted transmitter, though even that plan carried the unacceptable risk of Shmi being blown-up in retaliation when Watto discovered he had run. No, he would have to discuss that with the Jedi and Nubians when they showed up.

C-3PO had been tinkered with and tweaked far more than in his past life too, now that he had a better idea of what he was doing. The droid was finished aside from what Anakin considered his rightful golden plating, but some things never change and the scarcity of certain parts was one of them. 

He was sitting on the curved counter in Watto’s shop, quietly fiddling with a small hand-held device that had been brought in for same-day repairs, when he felt another Force user.

Carefully pulling his own Force presence into himself and shielding the rest, Anakin didn’t look up from his repairs. 

When a towering human male with long hair and a seemingly tent-sized poncho walked in accompanied by a tall and horribly awkward Gungan, a young human female with even longer hair wearing blue and grey, and a painfully familiar little droid, Anakin felt his heart stutter.

This was the beginning of everything.

He waited as Qui-Gon left to look for parts with Watto, eyes appearing firmly on his repairs. He gave quiet acknowledgement as Watto told him to mind the store, and kept an eye on Jar Jar as he wandered about in case the Gungan looked to be in danger of breaking something with his usual clumsiness. R2-D2 explored the store, and Anakin had to work to keep his breathing even as emotions he thought he’d properly dealt with came rushing back, though not as overwhelming or tumultuous as they would have been had he ignored them for the past year.

Carefully settling himself, he then allowed himself to look at the last member of the party.

Padmé. 

Beautiful, but so very out of place. Her loose hair alone would have marked her as an off-worlder; few women here wore their hair down when it made for such an easy target _(and could carry a lot of sand if a breeze blew through)._ Her shirt was a rich blue, not faded or worn looking, that would attract trouble if she wasn’t careful. The jewel on her belt made his fingers twitch even though he cared deeply for her enough to never seriously consider stealing from her.

His angel, so beautiful and out of place here.

He smiled and looked up at her, watching her as she looked around.

The galaxy had better watch out, he thought with a grin. Everything was about to change, whether anybody was ready for him or not.

“Are you an angel?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Detrimental grammatical errors?
> 
> -Though it's always sounded weird to me, I have used what I believe is the proper term for people from Naboo here at least once: Nubians. I remember their ship being a "Nubian vessel" or something similar, though if I'm wrong feel free to correct me.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the whole thing in one go. There are 5 chapters in total, they're all quite short, and everything ends on a potentially hopeful note. I will try to update once per week, but I'm doing shift work (4 on 4 off) so I can't promise a regular updating day.


End file.
